It was the manner in which this ticket was procured which first excited suspicion. Smeaton did not go to the ticket window himself, but skulked at the other end of the station, while he sent a boy whom he had hailed for the purpose to get the ticket. The boy was known, and the ticket clerk—astonished at him taking such a long journey—refused to give the ticket till he admitted that he was acting not for himself but for Will Smeaton. The boy probably made no mention of the circumstance to Smeaton, for when the ticket clerk went over the train helping to examine the tickets, and came upon Smeaton in an obscure corner, he said to him laughingly—“Were ye feared to come for the ticket yoursel’?” whereat the passenger looked horribly scared and taken aback, so much so that he was unable to reply before the ticket clerk was gone. While this had been taking place, some young fellows were making a queer catch on the river. They were salmon poachers, and were hurriedly making a cast of a net at a shady part of the stream after seeing the watchers safely out of sight, when suddenly one of them cried out— “Pull in! pull in! we’ve gotten as bonnie a beast as ever was ta’en oot the water. I saw the white glisk o’ her as she tried to skirt roond ootside the net, but we’ve gotten her! The sly witch is hidin’ at the bottom, but ye’ll see her in a meenit!” Very much more quickly and eagerly than paid salmon labourers, the others rushed the ends of the close-meshed net ashore, agreeing the while that if it was but a single fish, it was a sixty or seventy pounder at least, and in a moment or two had landed the bonnie white fish—sweet Jessie Aimers, with her light dress clinging close to her slight figure, her eyes closed as in death, and her white face gleaming up at them like a shining moon out of the gloom. “Gude save us, it’s a wuman! drooned! deid!” the scared poachers cried in a breath, and by a common impulse they were near dropping her and the net, and taking at once to their heels. But one more sharp-sighted than the rest, bending down, noticed first that there was a wound on the white brow, which was bleeding, and next, that the features were familiar to him. “Dog on it, lads, if it’s no bonnie Jessie Aimers!” Exclamations of incredulity and horror ran round the group, and it was only on one striking a match and holding the light close to the cold face that they were convinced of the truth. They stood there, silent and sorrowful, and with watchers and their own dangers far from their thoughts, and then one threw out a wonder as to how Jessie had got into the water. “Fell in, maybe?” suggested one. “Or jumped in, mair likely,” said another. “The puir thing has been fretting her life away for Wull Smeaton. I aye thoucht it wad come to this. She was far owre gude for him.”